Microsoft 365

At IMA Financial Group, I encountered a situation that was ripe for a Microsoft 365 makeover: Exchange on-premises and a variety of teleconference platforms. While the company did have a rudimentary intranet, it was built on Dreamweaver, which only one person (in Marketing) knew how to edit and update. 

Exchange Online

Following the playbook that I developed at ICAT (see below), Exchange was the first project I tackled. This time, working with professional services from SoftChoice and my Infrastructure team, I led the project to migrate the email system to Exchange online. This time, instead of a little over 200 user mailboxes, we were working with nearly 700 mailboxes. The project was more complex than the ICAT project, due not just to a greater number of employees, but an exponentially greater number of shared mailboxes and distribution lists. As many of these were also stale, the cleanup of these items added 3 weeks to the project timeline. However, this reduced the overall migration time and forced a much-needed cleaning. The overall project lasted 12 weeks and was completely on-time and on-budget. The final cutover occurred over a long holiday weekend and was completely before start of business on the following Tuesday.

Skype for Business

I again used my ICAT playbook to consolidate teleconferencing and web conferencing solutions for IMA, which had even more to work with. Additionally, the meeting room A/V solutions were so hard to use and unreliable that few in the company included video in their meetings. Opting, most of the time, to use a speakerphone and phone bridge for remote attendees. For those meetings that did require video, a technician from my Help Desk team was required to setup the meeting and stay present for the duration of the meeting to troubleshoot any issues. While the migration to Skype for Business did require upgrading the A/V equipment in all meeting rooms, the project paid for itself in the first year by eliminating the cost of the other teleconferencing solutions. Skype for Business was readily adopted by the employees, who could then schedule and conduct video-based meetings, without the assistance of the Help Desk.

SharePoint Online

IMA's rudimentary intranet, based on Dreamweaver, was nearly unused as it was difficult to find anything useful and most of the content was stale. Before starting the project to develop the intranet, using SharePoint Online, I gathered and established a Content, Communication and Collaboration Governance team. The team was comprised of leaders from the Communications, Marketing, and Legal Departments, and I was appointed leader. Together, we established standards and structure for the new Intranet. We then asked each department leader to identify a "Content Owner" for each of their department's content for the intranet. I then developed a SharePoint Training program and delivered training to all of the Content Owners so they could be comfortable with uploading, organizing and managing their department's content. Again, I contracted with Catapult/Quisitive Systems to build-out the structure of the new intranet and apply branding, as developed by the Marketing Department. However, as the Department Content Owners were now responsible for uploading content and managing their own sites, the cost for professional services was less than $50,000 for the entire project. After 12 weeks of diligent work by the entire project team, IMA Central (the name of the new Intranet) was launched to great fanfare and was readily adopted by all employees. 

PowerApps and Power Automate

With SharePoint online in place, I was able to next turn my attention to automating various workflows across the company. HR and Employee Benefits were early adopters of forms and workflow automation as many of their processes required the use of paper forms, scanning and faxing. Due to the ever-evolving nature of Microsoft 365 solutions, combined with the widespread adoption of the various products in the suite, I negotiated a Managed Services agreement with Quisitive to provide a bucket of hours each month that could be utilized for any M365 solution. The most popular use of the Managed Services hours was for PowerApps and Power Automate development.

One of the most dramatic opportunities for PowerApps was at the beginning of the pandemic when all company employees were moved to full-time work from home. As many employees required occasional access to the office, executive leadership asked me to develop an office access request and approval solution for employees and gave me two weeks to develop one. It took me a full week just to collect requirements for the solution from the HR, Risk Management and Legal Departments. With documented requirements, I then worked with a PowerApps and Power Automate Developer from Quisitive to build-out the solution using those tools. The new application was delivered on time and at no additional cost as I was able to use Managed Services hours for the effort. All requirements for the tool were met and/or exceeded.

Teams

While I had been working on a project plan to replace Skype for Business with Teams, those plans were accelerated by the pandemic. As all employees were moved to full time work from home, Teams was badly needed. I immediately started working on training documentation for employees. I also worked with my Infrastructure team to develop policies and configuration settings for Teams. At the same time, was working with my IT Support Team to push the Teams application to user workstations, using Intune. Within one week of employees been sent home to work, Teams had been deployed to all employees. The training materials and recording that I had developed were made available on the company intranet for easy access and reference. Once the client was available on all workstations, I started working with each Content Owner, from the corporate intranet project, to start creating Teams workspaces for each necessary team. The Content Owners then worked with team leaders and managers to migrate and organize their content in their new Teams. I then developed training documentation and videos for employees to more effectively use Teams workspaces. From start to finish, the project lasted 4 weeks. The entire company was able work effectively and efficiently while remote, for the first time in company history.

When I was Director of IT Special Projects for International Catastrophe Managers (ICAT), I had my first real opportunity to consider Office 365. In this scenario, I was developing an architecture and migration plan to move from an existing on-premises data center to a colocation solution. Since every system needed to be analyzed and planned, I took a look at Office 365. Additionally, I was interested in Skype for Business for teleconferencing consolidation and SharePoint Online was attractive as an intranet solution.  

Exchange Online

Working with Catapult Systems (acquired by Quisitive), I led the project to migrate from Exchange on-premises to Exchange Online. The project took 6 weeks, from start to finish, and cost approximately $45,000 for professional services, which is less than $225 per employee mailbox. During the process, we clean-up stale distribution lists, shared mailboxes and separated employee mailboxes. The actual migration occurred over a weekend, outside of normal business hours, and was completed by Sunday night with no impact to business and no emails lost. 

Skype for Business (Now Teams)

Upon completion of the Exchange Migration Project, I shifted my focus to Skype for Business. Up to that point, the company was using a number of teleconferencing solutions, including WebEx, Verizon Conferencing and a shared phone bridge on the Avaya PBX. As the company was building a new office, at the time, it was a good opportunity to standardize on one platform. As Skype for Business was included in the Office 365 subscription at no additional cost, it made good business since to standardize on Skype for Business. As part of the new office construction project, I was responsible for designing, sourcing and installing the Audio/Visual (A/V) systems in each of the meeting and huddle rooms, as well as the main conference room and boardroom. Working with our preferred A/V vendor, I developed equipment designs for each room that was fully compatible with Skype for Business.  While there were unique solutions for each room type, all of them supported wireless A/V connections to Skype and were highly intuitive. The net result was the fast and willing adoption of Skype by employees. By standardizing on a solution that was included in the Office 365 license, the company realized a $65,000 savings in the first year.

SharePoint Online

Once the Exchange and Skype for Business migrations were complete, I moved on to developing the company's first corporate intranet, named ICAT Central, built on SharePoint Online. This was a side project that I took on during my "spare" time. I worked with each business unit leader to identity their content Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and then worked with those SMEs to source, clean-up and migrate their relevant content to the new intranet. When the company was acquired by Marsh McClennan, one of the largest insurance brokerage companies in the world, the new intranet was instrumental in disseminating information to employees and coordinating the due diligence and integration efforts, ensuring a smooth transition.